Carl K. Eicher, "Facing up to Africa's Food Crisis," Foreign Affairs, Fall 1982.

Main point

The African states are suffering from a food production gap, the food production problem, hunger, and poverty. Agricultural development is a key to solve these problems which have continued these decades, but the procedure is relatively slow so donor agencies should be patient enough to wait for solving the African states’ basic technical, political, structural and policy constraints for 10 to 20 years.

Summary:

The chief problem of food and hunger crisis in sub-Sahara Africa in the 1980’s was “a food production gap and hunger”, which of the former resulted from the growing population and which of the latter resulted from poverty. As food imports of the countries in the region goes up over the past two decades, balance of payment deficits and external public debts have increased, being deteriorated by the world economic depression. In spite of aids from donors and some organizations, the solution of this crisis couldn’t be solved except considering “a number of difficult political, structural, and technical problems”. The key question of this crisis is, why the Green Revolution neglect Africa.

As common features in African countries in terms of food crisis,

and development.

the poor performance of them caused more constraints on development.

technology and available expertise on soil fertility.

In Sahara African countries, population growth, food imports, and poverty emerged.

of family planning programs, the indifference of most African heads and

intellectuals, and so on. But growing population could not be neglected.

domestic production, urbanization, availability of food aid, overvalued

foreign exchange rates, and the increase of rice and wheat consumption.

beyond crash food production campaigns to deal with poverty itself’

because of the linkage between food production and the hunger problem.

From these reasons, Africa can’t feed itself.

Besides, these constraints can be resulted from historical perspective.

years;

1. The low priority to agriculture because politicians, even if they were capitalists or socialists, considered agriculture as a “backward” sector which will eventually lead to dependency.
2. The main three drawbacks of the “political economy”; an assumption of economics as one discipline, urban areas’ job scarcity, and the lack of enough understanding in the agricultural sector by the macro models.
3. Negative pricing policies and heavy taxation decreased food production and exported crops. African states have to stimulate farmer’s incentives and their income level so as to abate poverty.
4. Although introducing agrarian capitalism or socialism was under discussion over the past 30 years, the choice of a national ideology is nothing but “one variable influencing the outcome of agricultural development projects”.
5. Despite the Green Revolution, the cereal yields in African countries were stagnant since 1965 and the productivity of farmers kept its low rate.

Though something should be done for the food crisis in African countries, it is true that African countries already have enough lands to produce more foods and vast foreign aids. Yet, the recent reports on African situations in terms of food and hunger exaggerate the need for more foreign aids. As effective steps for reconsidering about the agricultural development policy and finding the long-term solutions in African nations;

slogans about basic needs

reassessment of integrated rural development projects are necessary to

establish the trust between African nations and donors

The policymaker in each nation should reconsider their strategy with 2 goals; attaining a enough food surplus and decreasing the number of people in hunger. In terms of the policy reform, the reduction of governments’ authority was the main problem and parastatals caused the inefficiency of the food production. The food policy reform should be accompanied with not only raising the price of food and exporting crops but also food aid for development though food aid is a controversial topic.

The solution of this food crisis in African states depends on the long-term agricultural research for dry land with food crops and with livestock and for irrigation. The problem is whether donors can stand up with the long-term(at least 10 years) investments. African states have to proceed the strategy with bilateral donors. Then they also need the more investments on human capital which includes graduate agricultural training programs. Yet, agricultural study is still undervalued in the universities compared with law, medicine, and history. Donors preferred investments on food production, IRD projects, and agricultural research institutes. However, donors should demand the structural reform of the universities to African states instead of the commitment for the long-term aid. The graduate training in agriculture will have to come from within Africa. Moreover, agricultural research on food production, the creation of jobs in rural areas will be a prerequisite to solve the hunger, malnutrition, and poverty problem.

From these backgrounds, both donors and African states are prisoners of projects and slogans. The question whether the aid for Africa should be double in real terms during this decade depends on how these problems will be concluded;

Although donors think that African states are dependent to foreign aids and transactions already and even they have an excess of those, the donors have to think about the long-term development project and investments. The doubling aids would be valid if African states shift their strategy of agriculture and introduce policy reforms.

Summary by Yukiko Motohashi